Reptilia · Squamata
Simalia amethistinaSchneider, 1801
Amethystine or scrub python
Photograph placed in the public domain, CC0, via iNaturalist
An active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 565 cm nose to tail.
Once published as Morelia amethistina — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Pythonidae › Simalia
- Grows to
- 5651mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 20years
Longer than 84% of all pythons anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 750 to 7,900 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
42 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2013
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Colour on the back
- Black, Brown
- Pattern on the back
- Banded, blotched
- Venomous
- No
- Longest recorded life
- 20years
Stark et al. 2020
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 4900mm16 ft 1 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 2325mm7 ft 8 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 5651mm18 ft 6 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 1917mm6 ft 3 in
- Largest male · snout to vent
- 2325mm7 ft 8 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 750mm2 ft 6 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 57.9mm2.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 49,802g110 lb
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 2400g5.3 lb
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 50g1.8 oz
8500 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016, probably based on Cogger 2014 who says "Worrell records a giant specimen of 8.5 metres"), Natusch et al. 2020: max SVL 310 mm (in Table 1 of , not meant to give absolute maxima), and report a male 4 m long; neither Cogger nor Natusch et al. 2020 recognize kinghorni as valid, so it is unclear which species they refer to - if there are two... I give the same record size for both based on Fearn and Sambono 2000 (see also Murphy 2020): 5651 mm total length, 4900 mm SVL, a 24 kg female, Fearn 2002: 4730 mm SVL and total length 5325 with incomplete tail, "sometimes exceeding 5.5 m total length and 20 kg. At around 700 mm total length and 50 g, hatchlings of this species are larger than the adults of most other snake species" (Natusch et al. 2022; in their own data: 18 females 2020-3300 mm SVL, mean 2664, 1107-6000 g, mean 3066.5; 9 males 2030-3700 mm SVL, mean 2781, mass 1030-8686, mean 4225 g), max 6 m (Reed 2005), Shine 1994 (10 males 129-345, mean 191.7 cm SVL; 2 females 227-238, mean 232.5 cm SVL; hatchling SVL 750 mm)
snakes only in this source
snout-vent length; the source column mixes this with straight carapace length
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, terrestrial
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1700m
- Range size
- 721,203km²
- Home range · largest recorded
- 1,766,000m2
"Scrub pythons consume a wide variety of avian and mammalian prey, and congregate under trees containing colonies of metallic starlings, feeding on nestlings that fall from the trees18. These pythons sometimes consume relatively large prey, including macropodid marsupials" (Natusch et al. 2022), mammals and birds (Barends and Naik 2023)
Sit (Natusch et al. 2022)
"Snakes were active primarily by night, with larger snakes hunting less of the time overall, and more often by day" (Natusch et al. 2022)
Arboreal&Terrestrial (Feldman 2015)
0-1700 (O'Shea 2018), max 1600 (Reed 2005)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 11.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 10–19eggs
- Mean clutch
- 11.5eggs
- Egg length
- 95.15mm3.75 in
- Egg width
- 48.65mm2 in
Feldman et al. 2015, Meiri et al. 2019, O'Shea 1996
mean 11.5 (Meiri et al. 2019), 10-11 (O'Shea 2018), around 12 (Natusch et al. 2022), max 19 (Reed 2005), Shine 1994 (11-12, mean 11.5, n = 2 clutches)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Schneider
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1801
- Type locality
- Unknown
Keeping one
18 ft 6 in × 9 ft 3 in × 27 ft 10 in(565 × 283 × 848 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes snakes as a fraction of total length: 1 × 0.5 × 1.5.
Recorded both on the ground and climbing, so this is the larger of the two rules in every dimension.
Mindestanforderungen an die Haltung von Reptilien (Sachverständigengutachten), German Federal Ministry for Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry, Animal Welfare Division, 10 January 1997. The standard states these floor areas are recommendations rather than binding limits.
From this animal’s own total length of 18 ft 6 in (5651 mm), at 1 × 0.5 × 1.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Amethystine or scrub python. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.
Feeding
A prey item should be between the same width as the widest part of the snake's body and about 1.5 times that width.
Widely used across snake husbandry references. An alternative formulation gives prey at 10-15% of the snake's body mass. This is established practice, not a measurement.
2938kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 49,802 g, the heaviest recorded for Amethystine or scrub python — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Clutches in a year
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — First breeds from · youngest recorded
- — First breeds by · oldest recorded
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Fangs
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Red List criteria
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Habitat
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
Others in Pythonidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Simalia amethistina. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/simalia-amethistina
@misc{simalia_amethistina_2026,
title = {Simalia amethistina},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/simalia-amethistina}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.